Would you like to take better photos with the camera you always have with you—your smartphone?

Get ready to transform your mobile photography in a brand-new interactive workshop, The Phone Photography Project 2, starting July 17. Twenty expert iPhoneographers have collected their best tips, tricks, and tutorials for phone photography, and they're ready to share it all with you inside a private online classroom—with lots of fun happening on Instagram, too.

With practical tips for mastering lighting, composition, editing, and more, this workshop will give you the tools you need to create impressive photos you'll be proud to share online, in your home, or in your scrapbooks.

Learn more andregister hereEnter to win a spot in this fabulous class by following the prompts in the Rafflecopter widget below. Giveaway ends on July 3, 2014 at 12:00 a.m.

Right now, I'm feeling extra productive and full of ideas. Now, if I could just find a way to capture all this energy and excitement for when there's time to get everything done. As we all know, there's not a thing as having enough time, but it sounds good.I do know that I need to get better at time management and focus.Enough of that, here's what going on in my life Right Now.

We're almost finished with the first half of the year and July is just around the corner. Even though my list of projects to complete this Summer is still quite long, I feel that we've accomplished quite a bit.

Right now, things are busy and hectic. So many details to handle and new duties to add to the list of many, especially for Gordon. School is out and the girls are excited about having lots and lots of swim days while I'm trying to keep up with projects and activities to keep them engaged and happy!

Creating mini albums is my most favorite way to document our family's story, so you know I'm thrilled to be enrolled and to offer one lucky a reader a spot in this fabulous workshop.

About the Class

Four scrapbookers. Four very different vacations. Four mini albums that share their adventures in modern, memorable ways.

Pack up your pictures, patterned paper, and page protectors and join four talented instructors (Katrina Kennedy, Tami Morrison, Angie Gutshall, and Kim Jeffress) on this 4-week scrapbooking journey. Whether you're traveling across the globe, close to home, or not at all this year, Going Places will help you document your most treasured vacation memories.

Scrapbook a trip from this year, last year, or 10 years ago! Choose one approach or make them all! Our promise of "forever access" guarantees these ideas will be ready and waiting, no matter where your wanderlust takes you. With detailed instructions, helpful videos, and four unique album perspectives, Going Places will give you an arsenal of ideas that you can carry with you wherever

Making an executive decision, this month's #5onthe5th took place on the 6th because it was our 16th wedding anniversary. I thought it would be nice to capture our everyday life on a special day in our history.

What is 5 on the 5th?

5 on the 5th is a project where I capture our family's extraordinarily ordinary everyday moments on the 5th day of each month. It's based on the infamous 12 on the 12th photo project we've all heard of., but I changed it up knowing that I wouldn't take the time or remember to take 12 photos each month,.I chose the number 5, since we have 5 family members.

I use my iPhone 5s to take my photos and post to Instagram throughout the day, tagging the photos with #5onthe5th. If you do a search, you'll see that there are other IG'ers documenting their everyday moments right along with me each 5th day of the month.

I then post our 5 photos here on the blog, but most people don't. I just like to because then I have a permanent record of what I've documented each and every month.

May 2014

1 | Breakfast in bed on our 16th anniversary, served by Victoria. It was the Lemon Pound Cake from Food Lion that Gordon loves. She cut such big pieces for us, we had to split one and save the other piece for later!

2 | Victoria painted our wedding rings {left} and Isabella painted our portraits {right} for us. They were looking for a project one afternoon, so I searched and found some random canvases. It was all their idea from there. I always love when they do an art project and I have always told my kids that homemade gifts are the best!

If you don't think your kids listen to what you tell them something, here's an example from 22-year old Zach that they do!

3 | He knows I love Don Williams' voice, so he bought us tickets to see him in October! This, after I mentioned the concert to him and he said that it would be a good night to take Oma and Nana. I thought he didn't want to go. Well, he may still not want to go, but he's going because he knows I want to go. Love that guy.

4 | Work to do before the new roof can go on and we can install the wood siding that matches our 50-year old home. Then we can add the portico, install a new door, prime and paint, install the gutters, finish the landscaping, add the mulch and then I think we might be finished.

And this photo is such a perfect depiction of our life the last 16 years...always a project, always a new goal to work toward.

5 | Instead of doing what he had planned for our anniversary, we gathered with family and attended the memorial service for Uncle Bennett {Nana's oldest brother by 15 years}. It's been a tough few months for our family, but we're going to make it.

And now a blurry photo taken by Spunky, but one that I'm tickled to have anyway!

Sixteen years ago we vowed to be each other's partner forever on this bridge. We have grown in love and admiration for each other and every day find new things to love about each other. I'm the lucky one, that's for sure.

I'm happy to introduce a guest today, my friend Lisa Borbely. You may remember that she and I were 52Photos partners. Truthfully, I miss those weekly prompts. Hey, maybe we should start it back up as an Instagram challenge...are you in?

Lisa is a crafty crafter, a photographer with an eye that captures everyday life in new ways, a blogger, a Mom, and also newly engaged to her love. She has a heart of gold, this I know for sure, even though we've never met in real life.

Today, she's sharing her Gratitude Journal with us...with a twist. She and her fiancé share the same journal!

From Lisa

When I recieved the journal I had already thought that it would be one that me and my fiancé would use together. It was a suprise I had for him! He is a guy that is up for most creative adventures I think up :)

We keep our journal on my bedside table and we write in it each night as we get ready for bed. Since we usually write about a sentence each there is not always enough room in the journal for a whole month. I have added a few pages and labels so that we have a little more writing space!

I love the feel of the journal now that we have 2 months worth of grateful thoughts in there!

I have found that we repeat things when we write our daily gratefulness, for example a good day at work, a day with sunshine and laughter. That shows that we are grateful for everyday kind of things and it makes me very happy!

I can't thank Lisa and her fiancé enough for sharing their Journal with us. I adore that they have taken their thankfulness to the next level as a joint project and a few extra moments for them to reflect on their new life together.

It's been three months since I turned 50 and have been wanting to work on getting all those lists together into a mini album. But, if you're a regular reader, you know that we've had some sorrow in our family that has kind of taken us all by surprise and kind of put a damper on my crafting mojo.

I found a mini album at Tuesday Morning that would take the mountain of 6x6 paper pads I have from My Mind's Eye perfectly with no need for page protectors.

Here's what it looks like with just 27 lists. I'm not sure what my plan is for the remaining lists as I want them all to be in the same mini album. It my be that it's a chunkily album that doesn't properly close...and I'm okay with that.

The girls and I were on the porch after dinner and I decided to get a lap tray, my embellishment stash, a few spools of baker's twine and the 6x6 papers I had already chosen and spend some time adding my lists to the paper. I had already written my lists on these manila shipping tags one night when we were watching tv, a marathon of Big Bang Theory I think.

And here are a few pages I shared on Instagram a few nights ago. I pulled out all the open embellishment packages from my time as a My Mind's Eye Design Team member and decided to limit myself to them as a way of using up what was already open. So far, so good.

I'll keep working on my lists and in finding solution for getting the rest of my 50 lists in there. Here's a post about my album set-up.

"Life moves pretty fast.If you don't stop and look around once in a while,you could miss it."

About the Class

Amy Tan and Kelly Purkey know this all too well. Amy (of "Amy Tangerine" fame) is a brand-new mama living in sunny Southern California, and Kelly is a big-city scrapbooker who has called Chicago and New York home. Both are sensational memory keepers who have inspired thousands of fellow scrapbookers through their blogs, product lines, books, classes, design-team work, and more.

Now they've teamed up to create a new 4Experts workshop that will help you Stop. Look around. And capture life before you miss it.

Over the course of 12 weeks, Here & There Inspiration will teach you to appreciate the inspiring things in everyday life and then incorporate them into a dozen fun projects, including your own inspiration journal.

Enter To Win - GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED
Want to win a spot in this fun class?
Follow the prompts in the Rafflecopter widget below to enter.
Giveaway closes Friday, June 13, 2014 at 12:00 a.m....and the winner is Olivia Robertson!

I have a To Filofax Pinterest Board where I've catalogued some pretty awesome bloggers and Instagrammers. I encourage you to take a moment and browse through to find inspiration, pretty pictures and great resources for free printables and organizational techniques.

Inspiration

I've been playing around with designing my own project work sheets and find great inspiration from this highly organized, creative and kind planner guru.

Although we have been plenty busy, our 2014 Summer has been more relaxing than ever. Oh we've been working on plenty of projects, that's for sure, but we've just been taking it easier and trying to enjoy life more and the schedule less.

Now, you all know that I am a fan of my Filofax planner and of lists, too, but it's been refreshing to know that even though we have a "plan" for the day that it can be changed and moved to another day if that works best for us.

Here's hoping your Summer will be relaxing and full of fun last minute adventures, too!